Basilica

It seemed like a good idea to finally read this thriller that begins with a priest falling to his death from the dome of St. Peter's shortly before re-visiting the basilica for the first time in 20-some years. And this novel by newspaperman William Montalbano has the other distinction of anticipating the election of a Latino pope by a decade and a half.

The church portrayed by Montalbano is a flawed, very human institution. His protagonist, former Miami cop Paul Lorenzo, is somewhat casual about his vow of chastity in his new vocation as a lay brother. The suggestion is that most churchmen are not faithful to their vows and chastity is probably an outmoded idea, anyway. Lorenzo sought refuge in an order -- never really a good motivation -- because he botched an escort for a Latin American cardinal, stole a million dollars in drug money that fell into his hands as a result, and lost his wife and daughter in a kidnapping-hostage taking when the drug gang sought revenge.

That Latin American cardinal becomes Pope Pius XIII and Lorenzo becomes a fixer for the new pope, who goes by "Tredi" for the Italian for thirteen (tredicemo). The pope himself is a target for the drug gang's revenge and thwarting their plans drives the plot.

Montalbano, who died prematurely of a heart attack before this book was published, was a prize-winning journalist and a good writer. He spent seven years as the Vatican correspondent for the Los Angeles Times after many years covering Latin America, so he knows the world he describes from firsthand experience.

But when it comes to portraying churchmen and religious life, it is clear that his firsthand experience is as an outsider. It is fine to be cynical and worldly wise about the motivations and behavior of clerics, but it fails to do justice to the genuine idealism and altruism you find among those who dedicate their lives to God and manage to maintain their integrity. It might make the reader feel in the know when Brother Paul sleeps with his on-again, off-again girlfriend -- a former nun -- but there is a whole dimension missing in this depiction of the faithful. It may be well observed that religious life is just another career for many, but for others it is truly a life of faith, and there is no hint of that in Montalbano's characters.

Even the pope, despite his penchant for working the occasional miracle, seems to keep his faith at arm's length, like the cassock he takes on and off.

Brother Paul, then, who was a royal screw-up as a policeman, husband and father, and is anything but a model religious as he gets a chance at redemption, is a hard sell for the reader's sympathy. The plot itself is an improbable mix of the by-now standard drug cartel by-play and dirty Vatican politics. The identity of the eventual papal assassin is clear from the moment he enters the story, and only someone with Lorenzo's track record for slow-wittedness would have missed it.

The climactic scene in Umbria -- I read the book on a vacation to Umbria and Rome -- is somewhat contrived and fairly low-key as a climax. I left the book at the house we rented. It's fine for the airplane or for a vacation when you're looking for some mindless entertainment.

The Lincoln Deception

An accomplished author of several nonfiction historical books, David Stewart predictably comes up with a good story. But his skill in a debut novel at creating characters, crafting dialogue and pacing narrative is less predictable and a real treat. In prose that is lean and nimble, Stewart draws the reader into a novel that is part detective story and part buddy trip, with a dash of picaresque, as his characters seek to uncover a Confederate link in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln 35 years after John Wilkes Booth shot him in Ford Theater.

Stewart drew his inspiration from a short passage in his historical research indicating that Mary Surratt, one of Booth's co-conspirators who was hanged, confided a secret about the assassination to John Bingham, the lawyer who prosecuted her, before she died. In Stewart's fictional re-creation, Bingham in turn tells his doctor, Jamie Fraser, about the secret on his deathbed, without revealing what it is. This sets Fraser off on a quest to unravel the mystery.

There are enough contemporaries still alive in 1900 that Fraser's quest is anything but hopeless, as he pores through Bingham's notes and research on the assassination for possible leads. His quest takes him to other writers and researchers as well as to relatives of co-conspirators. Not all of the people he contacts wish him well, nor does everyone tell him the truth. Along the way, Fraser teams up with Speed Cook, a black former baseball player and would-be newspaper publisher. He also embarks on an unexpected and improbable romance with a former actress who has links to the Booth clan.

Stewart deftly situates the reader in the past as his familiarity with contemporary source material enables him to provide the telling detail while avoiding clumsy anachronisms. His language is vaguely archaic without ever being stilted, and frequently lightened with witty observations in the dialogue and point-of-view narration. The history detectives pursue their clues from Ohio to New York, Baltimore and Washington, often just ahead of powerful interests who do not want them to find out Surratt's secret. There is action and adventure when they do fall into the clutches of the villains.

The question of whether or not the Confederacy was actually involved in Lincoln's assassination, or what their motives might be given that Lee had already surrendered, is probably more interesting to professional historians than to the general reader. As one of the characters observes, knowing isn't going to bring Lincoln back. The resolution thus may seem anti-climactic to those who are expecting a blockbuster surprise. But this is not a "what-if" novel in the burgeoning alternative history genre. Rather, it is a creative imagining of details that fit with the known facts but remain hidden to us so far.

It is the journey rather than the destination which makes The Lincoln Deception such an engaging read. It is a chance to step into a time machine and play history detective with very well-informed guide.

Havana Queen

State Department veteran James Bruno combines his insider's view of the complex machinery of the U.S. government with his firsthand experience of Cuba to create this compelling scenario of how the Castro regime may, finally, come to an end.

Bruno's great sense of place, already evident in his earlier thrillers, comes to the fore, taking the reader to the streets of Havana and Santiago and to the bizarre world of the Guantanamo Line, where one of the world's last remaining Communist regimes and an illegal American occupier coexist.

Against this colorful backdrop, Bruno creates a fast-paced plot of the endgame in Cuba, as the corrupt regime of the Castro brothers faces its own group of militant rebels determined to throw them out just they had ousted Batista in the 1950s. An intrepid FBI agent of Cuban heritage, Nick Castillo, is drawn into this drama, making common cause with the rebels even as he falls into an ambiguous relationship with the designated heir of the Castros, Che's (fictional) daughter, Larisa Montilla.

The action includes the inter-agency conflict between the FBI and the CIA embodied in Castillo's own discordant relationship with Kate Kovalchuk, an "ice princess" paired with Castillo to find out just what is going on in Cuba as hardship and government paralysis drive the people to rebel against the failed regime.

Bruno has a healthy respect for the tenacity of a corrupt regime to cling to power. He also depicts how foolish it would be to underestimate the extent to which Cuban intelligence has infiltrated our own government with all-too-real vignettes of traitors at work. Just because the Castros are incompetent in running a country doesn't mean they aren't masters of espionage and sabotage.

In fact, in a final act of defiance, the dying regime in Cuba is ready to strike at the very heart of its giant nemesis to the north by setting in motion a plan to assassinate the president of the United States even as all is lost.

This is the dramatic denouement as rebel forces appear to win the day in Havana and Santiago, forcing Nick and Kate to return to the States in a last-ditch effort to foil this final plot.

Bruno's timely novel will have you checking the news to see how much of his scenario is taking place right now. His sympathetic portrayal of a society waiting to rejoin the civilized world will have you rooting for them, too, and the day when this last bastion of Leninism joins the dustheap of history.

The Geneva Trap

The settings and, for lack of a better word, the tradecraft move this lightweight thriller by Stella Rimington along. The author, a real-life M as the former DG of MI-5, has written a series of novels featuring Liz Carlyle as an agent. While this one, at least, lacks the panache of a James Bond tale, it has that reliable, competent prose that well-educated Brits bring to their writing and a view of true-life espionage with its feet firmly planted on the ground.

This one takes place largely in Geneva and Marseilles, as well as London, and that was part of its charm for me because it gave me a chance to revisit some places I have fond memories of. A brief side-trip to rural southern France, evocative of the Bruno novels, didn't hurt, either.

The main plot involves foiling an effort to infiltrate and sabotage an Anglo-American drone program. A subplot, unrelated except that involves the same characters, starts with protecting a former member of a cult-like counter-culture group and ends with foiling a plot to attack a G20 meeting in Avignon.

The British intelligence services portrayed here are not Le Carre's gloomy, traitorous dens any more than they are Fleming's fantasies. Rather, they are workmanlike versions of a domestic police force, where ordinary, fairly well-trained officers get on with their business. They are mostly pretty nice. Liz Carlyle is, of course, quite sympathetic, and her superiors and co-workers, despite some personality quirks, are at least well-intentioned. Her boyfriend in the French intelligence services is also nice; ditto for his co-workers and superiors. The pragmatic, conscientious agents in Switzerland are also...nice. Even the Russian traitor is nice and the North Korean mole comes across as an unfortunate waif. The only real meanies are the Russian pulling the strings of the drone plot and the French lowlifes plotting the G20 assault.

There is a slight sense of danger, and Liz lets herself get taken in a way bordering on incompetence, but she is charmingly rescued at the last minute by said French boyfriend (who himself was charmingly rescued at the last minute by a female colleague).

Perhaps intelligence work really is this congenial, at least viewed through the prism of a stiff-upper lip grande dame. If Le Carre and his imitators are too gloomy, these may err in being too cheery. But you have those great settings and that authentic tradecraft.

Dark Star Safari

Paul Theroux wants you to know exactly how hopeless Africa is. To prove it he undertook a journey overland from Cairo to Cape Town, largely through East Africa, bringing his vastly cynical powers of observation to yet another trip.

As I said in our book group discussion, I am in awe of Theroux's writing -- his ability to observe and describe places, people and situations. He is a compelling writer with great talent.

His venturing into places like Ethiopia and Sudan, which most of us will never visit, gives the reader a precious view into these societies.

That said, I found I could read this book only in small doses. His unrelenting cynicism and condescension and general unlikability put me off. We discussed in the group whether you have to like a writer to like his or her book. The problem is that in travel writing, which is essentially a memoir,  the writer's personality will intrude, which doesn't necessarily happen in other genres.

I finished only about a third of the book before our discussion. And, though I consider it better than the 3 or 4 earlier books of his I've read, I will probably put it aside for a while, and finish it, if I do, at a later date.

One of the points I made about Africa is that we see it as ridden with ineradicable problems because we are demanding that they organize their society the way we do. Africans lived happily in more primitive circumstances until two centuries ago, when Europeans invaded in a serious manner. In a global economy, of course, there is no way to preserve that primitive society. But rather than let Africans evolve at their own pace and in their own way, we have imposed a Western template on them that does not seem well suited.

Perhaps, I suggested, the inevitable Chinese colonization of Africa, as that ravenous economy scours the planet for natural resources, will provide new impetus for modernizing African society.

Maybe Africa is hopeless. But at various points, India, China and Brazil also seemed to have insurmountable problems. They have not yet succeeded in overcoming all of them, but they have advanced considerably.

Theroux's anecdotal account of his idiosyncratic journey through Africa makes for entertaining travel writing, but it is hardly the basis for any considered judgement about the future of the continent. It may already be outdated and someday, no doubt, it will appear as quaint as the 19th-century travel journals do to us today.

Graham Greene

"One never knows when the blow may fall." Anyone who thinks the book can add nothing to the marvelous Carol Reed film "The Third Man," need read no further than this first line to realize that some of Graham Greene's genius could not be translated into film.

This was one of the revelations from taking part in Jim Grady's 2-hour "seminar" on Greene at Politics & Prose. Grady -- author of the novel that led to one of the best spy films of all time, "Three Days of the Condor" -- has a keen eye for what makes a book suspenseful, but also dramatic in the full sense of the word.

He said one of the keys to Greene's success was his insistence on the necessity of morality. "The writer takes a moral position," Grady said. He recommended John Gardner's On Moral Fiction for a further discussion of that aspect. (I have The Art of Fiction on my shelf, and have now ordered the other one.)

The mood of dark disorientation holds for the novel The Third Man as well as the movie. Oddly, the book was published after the movie came out. Greene said he needed to write a fuller treatment in order to write the screenplay. Differences between the two come from changes made in the course of filming.

The ability to suddenly drive home a universal truth with a dazzling economy of language makes this a far more finished work that the modest introduction might suggest. "We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us" is a sentiment almost anyone can identify with.

Then there is the great line delivered with such panache by Orson Welles in the movie: "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."

In discussing The Third Man together with The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana, Grady said he was looking for "noir" novels. The three books also took place at pivotal moments in American history -- Europe as the Cold War began, Indochina as surreptitious American involvement began, and Cuba before Castro's coup. And, Grady noted, in all three, the hero was responsible for the death of someone important.

I didn't have a chance to re-read American and Havana for this discussion, so I remained mostly passive. I felt, perhaps because I had read it recently, that the discussion on Third Man was more stimulating. I remember finding Quiet American chilling. At the time, it it fit in with a class I'd had in college where the teacher talked about the dangerous naivete of Americans, as illustrated in the class by Herman Melville's Benito Cereno. 

In the P&P discussion, one participant noted the similarities between Havana and Tailor of Panama, so exactly parallel you might think Le Carre was paying homage to Greene. The latest chronologically, it was the lest favorite of the group, seeming more like a satire or farce than a genuine noir novel.

The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai's prizewinning autobiographical novel is a searing picture of how poverty and corruption can damage the human spirit. But the victims are not the poorest. While the young woman Sai -- even the name tells you who she's modeled on -- appears to be the main character, this is really a book about two men, the judge and the cook, known primarily not by their names but by the titles telling us their place in society.

The judge, Sai's grandfather, is a tortured, almost monstrous, human being, emotionally deformed by years of suppressed feeling. His violently misogynist treatment of his wife, shown in repeated flashbacks, and his generally misanthropic behavior cannot even be redeemed by his devotion to his dog, who bears the equally generic name Mutt. It is the cook who steals the show. He is the one who feels genuine affection for Sai when the orphan is taken -- somewhat inexplicably -- into the judge's semi-derelict mansion in Kalimpong. It is the cook who lives for his son and for his son's sake sends him away to make his fortune in America. It is the cook who pities the beggars who beseech the judge for help, the cook who searches the mountains for the missing Mutt, the cook in the end who is reunited happily with his son even while the province is gripped by civil strife.

Next to the judge's travails and the cook's quiet triumph, Sai's adolescent crush on her immature tutor, Gyan, is something of a subplot. Sai realizes she wants a life with wider scope in a foreign country and Gyan learns he wants a life with a much narrower scope and prefers the cowardice of tranquility to the boldness of revolution. Their brief fling is nothing more than the typical coming of age love affair. Even Gyan's betrayal of the judge's family seems relatively trifling against the larger backdrop of the social turmoil depicted in the novel, though it could have ended tragically.

Desai's uncompromising look at the squalor and cruelty of Indian society beneath the thin veneer of civilization was found to be depressing by most members of my book group. The situation seems virtually hopeless. The only escape is literally to leave the country -- as Sai plans and as we know from Desai's success is what she does -- or to accept the limited human happiness available in the small things of life, as the cook, his son, Biju, and Gyan ultimately opt for.

However, Desai is equally uncompromising in her scathing depiction of Biju's exploitation as an illegal immigrant in the U.S. Far from making his fortune -- or having any chance to do so -- Biju scrapes through the underbelly of New York, living in circumstances more squalid even than he would have at home. India, as his eventual homecoming makes clear, also offers the luxury of familiarity, in every sense of the word.

The book is beautifully written. Some book club members said the book was slow, at least at the beginning, but I found the powerful writing compelling from the first page. The descriptions, the insights, the turns of phrase carry the reader on a torrent. So many examples, but to cite just one:

[The judge rejects the supplications of two beggars] In this life, he remembered again, you must stop your thoughts if you wished to remain intact, or guilt and pity would take everything from you, even yourself from yourself....This was why he had retired. India was too messy for justice; it ended only in humiliation for the person in authority....If you let such people get an inch, they's take everything you had -- families yoked together because of guilt on one side, and an unending greed and capacity for dependence on the other -- and if they knew you were susceptible, everyone handed their guilt along so as to augment yours: old guilt, new guilt, any passed-on guilt whatever.

The historical setting -- a separatist uprising in the 1980s to establish an independent Gorkhaland -- provided further education in the multi-ethnic composition of India and the resulting tensions that we remain largely oblivious to. The racial strife and the recurring resistance to the overlay of British colonial administration create a toxic brew that occasionally overflows into violence. The drama of this uprising gave added depth to the novel.

Likewise, the portrayal of the monsoon period -- the relentless corrosion of the constant rain -- was so vivid you felt drenched and lent further drama to the action of the novel.

The book, in short, is a consummate piece of writing and a very satisfying read.